 "Kerala CM Pinarayi Vijayan at Parliament House in New Delhi on Friday Photo: PTI")
Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan on Wednesday termed as "unfortunate" the recent killing of two scrap collectors, a father-son duo from Assam, in a steel bomb blast in Kannur district, and slammed the Congress-led UDF opposition for allegedly using the incident to portray that the law and order situation in the state was in danger.
He said the incident occurred on July 6 when the deceased had tried to open a steel container which they had found while collecting scrap at Chavassery in Iritty, where "communal forces like SDPI, Popular Front and RSS have some influential pockets." Vijayan was speaking in the state assembly, giving reply to an opposition notice seeking an adjournment motion over the alleged recurring instances of violence and bomb blasts and locals mounting concerns about it. According to police, Fazal Haq (50) and his son Shaheedul, in his 20s, had died in the blast that took place at their residence while categorising the collected scrap. During the Zero Hour, Vijayan said it was an unfortunate incident that the blast occurred and two people were killed while collecting and storing abandoned scrap articles. Though the source of the explosive substance, which had claimed the life of the duo, was yet to be identified, police had information that the communal forces were amassing armaments in the area to settle their scores with each other, he said. The police would conduct a thorough investigation to ascertain the details of the weapons the communal forces collected for 'political vendetta' and abandoned later and would take stringent action against the culprits, he said. Criticising Congress MLA Sunny Joseph for taking up the matter for adjournment motion, Vijayan said the topic was picked as the opposition was facing a dearth of issues to raise against the government and he tried to express his political stand under the garb of the unfortunate incident.
Rejecting the involvement of the ruling CPI (M) in violent incidents reported in Kannur, he said it was not the Marxist party but outfits like SDPI, Popular Front and RSS that were creating issues in the northern district. However, there was no reference to them in the opposition notice. Citing figures, the CM said as many as 9 CPI(M) activists have been killed in the state from 2020 till date. Of them, five had been done by UDF activists and four by the RSS workers, Vijayan alleged. During 2011-16, the tenure of the previous UDF government, as many as 1,760 murder cases had been reported in the state and 35 among them were political killings, he claimed. The Chief Minister pointed out that a total of 1,516 murders had been reported during his previous government (2016-21) and 26 were political murders. But, stringent legal measures have been taken against all the culprits cutting across political parties during that period and investigation had not been sabotaged in any case, he claimed.
"The UDF should withdraw from the wrong charges which they have raised for sheer political gains. The law and order situation in Kerala is intact. If anyone tries to break it, the strong clutches of law will emerge," the Chief Minister added.
Joseph, however, urged the government to probe and find out for whom the bombs and explosive materials had been made in Kannur. He alleged several CPI(M) and BJP activists had been killed while making bombs in the northern district but investigation had not been carried out properly in any such case in the last 10 years.
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